In her appeal to the CAS, Ms Sharapova seeks the annulment of the Tribunal’s decision to sanction her with a two-year period of ineligibility further to an anti-doping rule violation. Ms Sharapova submits that the period of ineligibility should be eliminated, or in the alternative, reduced.

The parties have agreed to an expedited procedure which will allow the CAS to render a decision, at the latest, on 18 July 2016. The final decision will be announced and published by CAS when it is available.

No decision has been made if there will be an actual hearing on the case, or if CAS will review the ruling on its own.

CAS could reduce the ban to six months (or fewer) thus allowing Sharapova to compete in the August Olympics (ban begins retroactively to January 26).

I’d be interested in seeing her arguments. The proportionality arguments she seemed to raise in the underlying proceeding were about how much money she’d lose with a two-year ban, which isn’t the most compelling argument when you’re asking a panel to exercise discretion.

Thank you. The author said very eloquently what I was trying to explain on this pages for months now. He also tackled a few problems I avoid to write about, since they don’t seem tennis related. But all of this was well know to anybody who doesn’t exclusively rely on anglo-saxon press…

The newest example is about Russian hooligans in France. Nobody has been arrested. And here, you have a photo of “Russian” football hooligans:

Maria’s example of being “selected” for drug testing should be a warning to All” tennis players. Let them know that as a tennis player unless they develop a strong Fan based in ONE country they will be the ones selected for drug testing. For many, many years I have seen behavior from some players that absolutely indicated some use of steroids,and or
drug- use; some even had to take months off each year(under the guise of injury) to get their bodies clean again while offering to be drug tested during their clean time; then back to the drugs etc. Luckily, for them, they had enough of a strong Fan base to avoid inopportune drug testing. However, for Maria, who is divided between two countries and has focused on the sport of tennis rather than devlopping “Fans”, she is “dead-meat” to be used as an example. Players learn your lesson well; do not just focus on tennis; but work on getting as many Fans behind you as possible. In other words, if you bring in enough $$$$$$$$ for the TEnnis CEO”s you will survive any test.

I’ve heard the argument that Maria lacks a fan base in the locker room, but not outside of it. How is she the highest earning female tennis player? But I suppose life is boring without conspiracy theories.

Of course, this could have been avoided if she had tasked anyone – ANYONE – on her ginormous team with the simple task of reviewing the list of banned substances. I suppose that means she would have had to tell someone she was taking the drug, though. Decisions, decisions.

Russian doctor (not the original – one she consulted in 2015), American doctor, coach, trainer, physio, nutritionist, Yuri, agent, agent’s flunky…. That’s just based on the tribunal’s report. I have no idea how many other people she employs in her various undertakings.

She stopped using that doctor in 2012 (perhaps sooner, can’t remember) and she didn’t tell her current doctor she was on it. She chose not to assign anyone (except maybe her agent) with the responsibility for checking the list. It’s shocking, someone with so much at stake and the means to hire people to take care of this very basic issue.

The best known states where doping is/was rampant were the DDR, where it was organized on a state level (we know, today, that the German football team in 1954 was doping; cases like Kornelia Ender, were famous), and the USA, the real Mecca of doping, where there is a culture of PED.

I hope that nobody is credulous enough to believe that Maria, living in a country where doping is widespread, where the whole Olympic cycling team was doping with the knowledge of the USADA, where Marion Jones fell only because it couldn’t be hidden any more, and the same applies to Lance Armstrong (just read the “Secret race” — books were published how his whole team doped — where Florence Griffith died of PED use, would take PED without medical supervision.

There is no possibility whatsoever that at least part of her team didn’t know, that her doctor didn’t know, that nobody checked the list of banned substances. She was framed like Roger Rabbit, because she is Russian.

Read the interview with Angel Herrera — and you would know that when a serious athlete wants to dope, there is practically no way you can catch him. Each and every time a serious doping affair made the first page of the newspapers, it was because of an insider.

And there are no countries out of it. Where do you think French and Italian football teams go for sanguine transfusions? In Swiss! In Europe, Germany, Swiss, Russia, Spain are big centres. The US an even bigger, with Mexico nearby.

And I tend to believe that Sharapova was taking legal supplements rather than doping. Not so long ago, a famous tennis player won a slam tournament, spoke of big plans, then suddenly retired. She lost 30 pounds in a short time after the end of her career. Such cases should be investigated more thoroughly, although S.M. hinted in a question I asked him that it was a cover up. You’re just looking in the wrong direction. JJ, by her own admission, got 12 pounds of muscles in one month working with G.R. Without taking anything? I lifted weights in my youth — who is she kidding?